English 190

Description

We dream of becoming something other than what we are. To be human is to be in love with transformation. That love of becoming something other, of transforming ourselves from one thing to another, infuses our literature since the first artists took up ochre and charcoal to sketch out a half-man, half-beast on a cave wall. In this seminar we will try to grasp and analyze this urge to transform, metamorphose and transcend, from prehistory to the gaudy metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius to the elaborate composite creatures of the medieval and fairy tale bestiary and up through the monsters and misbegottens that populate the Victorian mind (Mary Shelley’s New Prometheus, Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, Stoker's Count Dracula, Wilde's Dorian Gray). Armed with this history, we will take a new look at the teeming ranks of batmen, werewolves, vampires, and X-men that crowd our contemporary popular imagination.

Please read the paragraph on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Clsases for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.